Chasing the East Wind
by crowind
Summary: Or Tsunade and Sasuke's Excellent Adventure. Sasuke was doing just fine on the road of atonement when Tsunade ran him over. He never could just walk it off.
1. Chapter 1

_For roadkill2580. Better half a year late than never, eh?_

* * *

Sasuke woke with lungs saturated in fermented orange. Nothing seemed to have been damaged. His sword remained within reach. He felt nothing below the neck but rage such that he hadn't felt in a while. He was in a cheap inn he didn't remember checking in, the window making creaking sound as night breeze teased it - it should have been sunset.

The cloying after-taste triggered a dry heave. Between desperate attempts to cough out the taste, he remembered: a sweet drink, and the most enchanting woman he'd ever laid his eyes on. He had taken a whiff and, despite his paranoia, despite his distaste for both alcohol and sweets, had accepted her offering. She sat by his bed, watching with naked malevolent glee that, to his dismay, only seemed to enhance her beauty.

"Those eyes of yours are useless against olfactory genjutsu, eh?" The Godaime Hokage said, accenting his name with something he couldn't place. "Uchiha."

Just as she had (temporarily? permanently?) paralysed him, his birthright remained inert. He glared anyway. She got his message and waved impatiently. "I had to be sure this place would remain intact. Relax, you only lost an hour at most.

"Though I must say, you weren't terribly hard to find. Didn't exactly make yourself forgettable, going through every settlement in a straight line. Even the daimyo's tax-men exercise less due diligence, but then..." Her eyes roved over his lanky form, his empty sleeve, and finally resting on his eye. He would gladly give her the black flames she so clearly desired, but alas. "... that's about the extent of your diligence, isn't it? You should be grateful it was me."

"Is it Kakashi or Naruto."

The answer, delivered under a delicately raised eyebrow, had him frozen faster than a dewdrop in winter. "It's our other mutual acquaintance." And to froths as she cackled. "Good heavens, you do care for her. No, not Sakura, it's our other mutual acquaintance. Does the name Orochimaru ring a bell, hm?"

"You work for Orochimaru," Sasuke said after a gaping second of waiting for the punchline.

Her lips broke into a predatory smile. "Of course. The five genin I threw to their deaths for the sake of retrieving your renegade hide, the monumental hogwash I spouted to get the Raikage off your pretty neck - of course my intention has always been to hand you to Orochimaru myself."

Sasuke watched helplessly as chakra-laden hand descended on his forehead. Tsunade's chakra was cold under his skin, in his bones, and it was everywhere as Sasuke went numb. And then he could move. He flexed his limbs, conscious of the vile woman watching him. Brown eyes met red without flinching. He broke the contact first, flickering to stand behind her.

Without turning around, the former Hokage said, "Here's the deal: as of now you're hired."

The sword rattled menacingly in his white knuckles.

"Would you rather a formal mission contract? You, Uchiha Sasuke, probationary Konoha-nin on a long leash, will help me find Orochimaru, and I, your client, will compensate accordingly. Everything else is according to the standard terms and stipulations of Konoha's mission regulations, blahblah. Is that amenable?"

Sasuke waited. She still hadn't contracted a single muscle - the Sharingan would know. "You're serious," Sasuke spat.

"You could have saved yourself the paranoia with but three additional words."

Sasuke very, very reluctantly kept the sword sheathed. Several seconds passed before he rolled his eyes and grunted.

"Since I don't speak young, I'll take that as a yes. So!" Tsunade twisted and threw her legs around the chair's back. Chin propped on tented hands, she said, "Where do we start?"


	2. Chapter 2

Though Tsunade prided herself in being his first client, it couldn't have been farther than the truth. Through no conscious decision, Sasuke's second journey was a marked contrast to his first. He went where the winds took him: the sunken ruins of Uzushiogakure, the hollows where the desert winds of Kaze no Kuni would not go. Wherever shinobi rarely trod Sasuke would gladly map with his feet. At some point he started visiting every city, every town, every village that wasn't hidden. He tasted their dishes, bathed in their waters. It was strange at first, but he became used to waking up thinking of nothing more pressing than the idle necessity of daily sustenance. From time to time he stood guard at their festivals, walked by their trade carts. Somehow there was always work, even for a crippled, masterless warrior, even for a clumsy, unskilled young man.

Once in a while he suffered to sit down and wrote everything. Above anything else, shinobi traded in information, or Sasuke thought they used to. So he wrote his observations and had his hawk carry them to Kakashi, bill by bill of shinobi bank notes paying for his atonement. He wondered if that was what it looked like to Tsunade, who as the former Hokage would have access. The Hokage's tax-man, she'd dubbed him glibly. No Konoha-nin knew the outside world better than Sasuke (and, as he would discover after their journey, Tsunade herself).

In all his travels he'd not once heard of Orochimaru, though that didn't mean anything. The man was slippery. Stopping at major towns along the way had seemed a sound idea at the time. Information was critical to a manhunt, and information flowed to crowded space the way everything ended in the sewer.

His first day on the job, they stopped at a hub town in Ishi. Sasuke's first act as a rehabilitated and recently-leashed Konoha genin was to hold back a Kusa-nin before he became a smear on the card table.

Splitting up had seemed sound at the time, being that they were both highly capable shinobi. Apparently Sasuke had overestimated the Godaime Hokage's ability to conduct herself during duty.

"We're leaving," he groused in Tsunade's ear. The casino was packed, and the mob were closing in. A bet was already going around: ronin vs shinobi, who would win? Sasuke smacked the Kusa-nin between the shoulders, rendering him unconscious. "Now."

Tsunade's glare was unfocused, but she followed him outside with only a little protest. She followed him all the way to the inn, humming to herself and ambulating like a drunk, bipedal tortoise. Sasuke couldn't stop checking for residue of her genjutsu. There wasn't any. He knew he didn't have to take this mission; his standing with Konoha couldn't have possibly worsened. Or in the opposite direction, he doubted this woman could help him in that regard.

He checked them into the cheapest inn in town, into the cheapest room that wasn't a closet. At the rate she was going he would be paid entirely in gambling debts. He had gone on what Konoha's office would classify as escort missions, but only this one brought unwelcome memories of his very first. Drunk, ornery clients and S-rank missing nin. All that was missing was the annoying teammates and indifferent commander. Not that Tsunade couldn't play those roles in a pinch.

"A hell of a thing, isn't it? Having someone believe in you," Tsunade said apropos of nothing. She was laid on her back in the only bed. Sasuke looked up from where he was folded on the floor, then resumed poking at the hole in his cloak. It had come a long way from the blue cloak Sakura had gifted him. He could almost hear her click her tongue, saw the strands of her hair swinging as she shook her head. She would mutter something about taking better care of himself even as she handed him a shiny new cloak.

Sasuke closed his eyes, exhaled, and took out his sewing kit. Tsunade's voice droned over his head. Sleep-talking, he thought.

"He gazes at you with this fervor, blind as a man gazing into the sun. You wonder, does he know me better than I know myself, to know the great man I could become? You try, oh how you try to shine. Only you are not the sun, and you've burned yourself inside out before this came to light. Then when you turn to him, he will look away from your pitiful husk. It was never you; it was this phantasm he will by heaven turn into reality. It was never about you."

The cloak held fast between his feet, Sasuke sewed. One, two, three stitches, then Tsunade said, quite lucidly, "Oi, Uchiha, were you really Orochimaru's disciple? I can't imagine he would condescend to teach someone dull."

"Orochimaru wanted my body; he didn't need my mind." The bed creaked, and he felt rather than saw her incredulous stare. Needle in, needle out, needle poking his toe. The eyes didn't go away. Apparently he wasn't getting out of this silent. "What, you and Orochimaru?"

"Are you always so literal?" Tsunade snorted, laying back down. "All right, then, suppose this is a narrative. Try a bit closer to home."

"Naruto. Believes in you. Or you thought he did."

"But you have to wonder sometimes, what is your substance? What are you when he is not present to conjure you for you? Isn't that why you left? Have you found it?"

A wise man would have stayed quiet. Sasuke had never thought himself wise, but inebriated by atmosphere seemed more likely. "We were talking about you."

"Ah well, he's dead and I'm a relic of the past, not so interesting."

"Did you kill him?" Sasuke interrupted, suspicious that they were no longer speaking of Naruto. He needed to know for leverage, he told himself, since she knew so much of him already.

"It would have devastated him to see me fall," she said quietly. When he looked up she was tracing gibberish in air. "It would have killed him to know he was the reason I lost myself. Such a fool. Love. Sakura tried to kill you, didn't she."

The needle was heavy in his hand. There was rust right under his index finger. But even focusing intently on his work he couldn't block out her voice. "Strange things people do in the name of love. She's stronger than you think. Sakura."

"Do you have a point?" The job done, Sasuke reluctantly snapped the thread and packed up.

Tsunade laughed. She refused to explain why, and instead demanded that Sasuke made his report. There was nothing on the Orochimaru front, but since she hadn't specified he summarised the state of Ishi. How its civilian holdings, comprising ninety five percent of the country, would have flourished if only they could have amputated the almost-parasitic hidden village. It was always tiny and at loggerheads with Kusa, but with the amnesty and then cooperation between the major countries suddenly there were fewer jobs for both hidden villages.

There. Succinct and thorough. A most excellent bedtime story. Sasuke went to sleep with one ear pressed to the sleeping bag and a hand flat on the other.


	3. Chapter 3

There was a seal on the entrance to Orochimaru's main base in Oto. It was new; Sasuke couldn't unlock it. He didn't recognise the pattern either, though he was not a fuuinjutsu expert.

"It's sealed, isn't it?" Tsunade said. Sasuke nodded. "Curious, I didn't authorise anything of the sort after we'd cleaned this place."

Despite himself, Sasuke was inclined to agree. He had taken her there not because he'd thought they would find Orochimaru within, but it seemed to have worked out anyway.

Tsunade stared at a point some twenty centimetres off the active centre of the seal. Sasuke thought of telling her, but she beat him to the punch. It started with an indent, then the crack flowered, and suddenly there was gravel in his ears and dust between his teeth, and a gaping hole on the mountainside. She waved uselessly at the dust, then lit a torch with a theatrical snap of fingers. "Lead the way."

Sasuke glared at her, wondering how exactly Orochimaru could have compared him to her, quickly followed by wondering why he'd thought of Orochimaru at all.

The base was all dark tunnels, all coiling and branching at unexpected turns, all winding at the center. Sasuke couldn't help thinking he had just entered the jaw of the snake, a meal voluntarily walking down its digestive tract. Though a snake's wouldn't have so many exits.

Tsunade's breathing raced ahead of them, bouncing off the stone walls and floors. (Sasuke's didn't; he hadn't let go of himself that much.) Despite all the noise, they arrived at Sasuke's old room unperturbed. No new tenants, then.

On the underside of the bed he had used while in Oto there was a crack. It was tiny, fit only for insects and his fingernail, and it had used to drive him crazy the first few nights trying to discover the source of the scuttling noise. At present he had to use his sewing needle to pin and pull out the preserved cockroach and then his notes from under its carapace.

After a quick inspection, he handed it to Tsunade. She held the notes between her index and middle fingers as though she was holding an exploding tag.

"And this has all of Orochimaru's base?" Sasuke nodded, setting the cockroach on the bed. Tsunade squinted; the note was only as long as her index finger and just as wide. "Maybe you ran out of paper. Can you even read your own chicken scratch?"

Sasuke rattled off the items on the list. There were only two, anyway. He didn't voice out his suspicion that Orochimaru had (in light of their current excursion, wisely) held off one or ten more secret bases. Orochimaru might have abandoned them all together and started anew, though Tsunade had dismissed that early on.

"So, Uchiha," Tsunade said to his left eye. Like most people, she reduced his face to the Rinnegan. Unlike most people, she was ever daring it to retaliate. "How does it feel to be back? You lived here for, what, three years?"

Sasuke grunted. "Where next?"

"Look, kid, I get it, probably more than anyone else. Had a longer tenure as a rogue than you, too. Don't know why they wanted me for Hokage, but it happened."

The last thing Sasuke needed was the former Hokage's sympathy – or worse, her empathy – wrapped in arrogance and presumptions as it was. "But only until Kakashi was ready."

"Ha," Tsunade said, vaguely amused. "Is that how he told the story? No… it's Naruto, isn't it? And I suppose Kakashi is only keeping the seat warm until he's ready?"

"Where next?"

"Why did you write this down?" Sasuke glared, though the effect was diminished by the poor lighting. She pocketed his notes. "Tsk, so impatient. There's one other thing I want to see."

Sasuke counted to ten before he followed, almost as if pulled by her genjutsu.

He found her on the top of a mountain, poised as a would be conqueror surveying a promising land. From here they could see all of Otogakure, even the parts that were never Orochimaru's. Otogakure was more of a village than Konoha ever aspired to, more hidden, even. Looking at it, one wouldn't have guessed it housed shinobi. Rice paddies at the center, and the village planned around irrigation channels, and in the end it wasn't even half the size of Konoha after Pain had gone through it.

But whatever else Orochimaru was, he had never ordered his likeness plastered on a cliffside.

Tsunade sounded almost indignant as she spoke. "This place used to be this big." She stretched her index finger and thumb as though measuring a ring for her nose. "'Twas more than a decade ago, under the old, doddering Otokage. What's the new one like?"

Sasuke wouldn't have noticed him if not for his hat; he groveled at Orochimaru's feet like any other. "Orochimaru let him run the village." The Oto during his apprenticeship with Orochimaru and the Oto of today did not seem much different. Orochimaru had provided protection, the occasional jutsu and technology in exchange for resources and warm bodies, but for the most part the village existed without him. Tiny, but as happy as any place could be.

"He would. To Orochimaru hell is bureaucracy, existing only to waste precious time better spent on research. Did he ever tell you the Sandaime had meant to appoint him as his successor? Before a literal golden boy came along, at least."

Tsunade reminded him – with no small amount of consternation – of one of his closer relatives, an old obasan who never stopped complaining about her feckless husband while he was alive and followed him almost immediately to death.

"What does Konoha want with him?" Sasuke asked. Orochimaru had slithered away along with the rest of his other team in the chaos of the abolishment of the Infinite Tsukuyomi. And the war – he had to pause and count – was three years ago. At least. Where had his time gone?

Tsunade said, "That depends on what he wants with Konoha, doesn't it? Ask instead what he wanted with you."

Even as he scoffed, she laughed and answered her own question. "Ungrateful brat that you are, he'd love to see you. Don't you want to make your old master happy? No? You're such an Uchiha, Sasuke."

Like an idiot carp he bit the bait. "And what do you know about the Uchiha?"

"Why, I had my personal Uchiha rival – ah, you wouldn't know what it's like; my clan was dead by your time."

"I do," Sasuke interrupted. "Senju and Uchiha, the strongest shinobi clans and founders of Konoha. Descendants of the Rikudou Sennin's brothers."

Tsunade smiled. "Therefore fated to clash for all eternity, or is that only for male heirs? And since one doesn't exist for you, you turned to Naruto?

"I used to think it injustice. I was young then, and you were many, teeming like ants in your aloof hill overlooking the village while our numbers dwindled by the day in purchase of peace – yes, peace for the Uchiha too. But I was wrong. What happened to your family… that was injustice."

Sasuke shrugged. He'd accepted her apology as then ruling Hokage and student of the Sandaime, under whose rule it had happened; her apology as a member of a rival clan he never knew seemed unnecessary. "I don't want to destroy Konoha anymore."

"And I believe you," she said with gentle conviction, "Else I wouldn't have pardoned you, though I don't doubt you would've had your freedom either way, knowing that colourful guardian spirit of yours. But here we are, the biological culminations of the two great founding clans of Konoha, so far away from home. And I am the last, the Senju name will end with me. But you, Uchiha, you are at a precipice few others could experience. Will you be its last scion, or will you be the second patriarch of the Uchiha, Sasuke?"

Sasuke shrugged again. Konoha had existed just fine in the years he'd been away. Evidently they could do without Tsunade either. But he knew better than to say it and invite further… whatever it was she'd been trying to do with him. Drunk or sober, the only difference was the calculation involved in her circumlocution. Either way she remained opaque and unwanted to him.

Tsunade said, "Let's see if Orochimaru's turned a patch of Ame into sunny paradise," and leapt, dove off the hill and landed without a sound. Sasuke watched her disappear into the forest below, not once looking back to ensure he'd followed.

Sasuke rolled his eyes and took the safer route of running down the ledge.


	4. Chapter 4

_Rating upped for maggots. Rating wasn't upped for chapter length._

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A misconception about Ame that Sasuke didn't realise until his second visit: Ame did, in fact, know of the sun. Winds changed and blew the rain here and there, and for three months at a time the scorching breath of Kaze desert found a new home in Ame, and for a few days in a year it knew a drought such that it forgot an entire year of rain.

It was raining when they arrived at a town on Ame's western frontier. Once it had been the wealthiest in the country, before Hanzo decided to make an example of its lord. Even now it was struggling to regain half of its original size. Sasuke assumed that was why Orochimaru felt safe hijacking the lord's summer home, at the border, as the front of his base.

This time, they weren't the first to arrive. The ambusher dropped like a plank with a single application of Chidori Senbon, twitching but otherwise paralysed. Sasuke flipped him over with his toe. The forehead protector of Ishi, normally too far and too small to be on Konoha's notice. It was only a couple of days ago that they had exited Ishi, though Sasuke would have noticed if he'd been followed.

"You wanted him to catch us," Sasuke said.

Tsunade looked up from where she was fussing with the only decent table in the building. "Oh, is that a problem? I was so sure you could've handled it," she said. Just as he had known she would step back and… he hadn't known she would clean the table, but she had telegraphed her non-participation well in advance.

Tsunade came over and knelt, examining the man. "Only paralysed, eh," she hummed to herself, not so much surprised as approving. Sasuke pretended to not have listened. But he couldn't stop thinking that after all these years fighting alone – Naruto was one thing, but this infuriating stranger anticipated his moves too easily.

The Ishi-nin had stopped convulsing, laid down on a table. Tsunade uncovered the soaked and blackened bandages around his leg, revealing an old wound Sasuke hadn't caused.

"Your eye doesn't shoot miraculous healing rays, does it?" He couldn't see her face, bent on the patient. "Would've been useful, though heavens know it's too powerful as it is."

A tiny flame, he thought, she was the legendary healer, she would get over it. As though she'd sensed his thoughts, she looked up at him, the Godaime Hokage judging a rogue. Then she smirked and said, "Wanna learn medicine, Sasuke? We'll make history, you and I. You'll be the last Uchiha to study under a Senju. You won't ever be good at it, but –"

Sasuke snorted and went to secure the area, something he should have done first thing instead of horsing around with the former Hokage.

The mansion was painted with dried blood, likely from the time of Hanzo's culling, yet he didn't find a single body until he found the small chamber at the very back, near the kitchen. The servants' chamber, he'd guess. The smell drew him, quite literally; he would recognise the reek of rotting corpse anywhere. Though the Ishi-nin on the bed seemed technically alive, or at least breathing if shallowly. He was paler than gypsum, and didn't react at all to the cool kiss of Sasuke's sword on his neck. His torso was haphazardly dressed with pus-soaked bandages. Maggots crawled in and out the gaps – Sasuke squinted in mild horror – maggots living and happily eating on blackened and rotting flesh. The sliver of white he'd thought was bandage was actually his rib bone.

When he came to get her, Tsunade was still in the middle of her treatment. He waited until she acknowledged his presence with an impatient click of her tongue before saying, "Come with me."

Apart from one raised eyebrow she gave no indication of hearing him. She fussed with the new bandaging. Just as Sasuke opened his mouth she turned and said, "Remember what I said about courtesy –"

"Because you'd have left that one half-done."

She snorted. "Clever boy, I'll introduce you to the concept of triage one day. Though, the benefits of courtesy for an impatient person first, I think." She poked the patient's wound. Satisfied by his non-reaction, she said, "Lead the way, o rude boy."

Sasuke had left the body untouched, lest more maggots come out. Though they seemed to have multiplied while he wasn't looking anyway. Tsunade whistled and leaned closer to the body (Sasuke wondered if there was something wrong with the woman's nose).

"Well, I'll be. C'mere, Uchiha, come and see the only edge tiny Ishi ever held. Orochimaru used to so envious, vulgar though it is – hey, Uchiha," she said when he remained stolidly on the threshold, scanning the corridors for more Ishi-nin, rotting or otherwise. "My offer still stands. Come here and turn on your Sharingan if you can't do without it. Is it the maggots? Didn't peg you for the type."

"We're here to look for Orochimaru," he snapped, and left to do just that.

For all its grandeur and the finish on even the kitchen, the manor compensated with its toilet. The ground floor's combined ancient aesthetic of a hole in the ground with an indoor leaning, and maybe indoor plumbing. There was a spray bottle behind the door that likely used to house air freshener. He could have used that. Although he felt ridiculous for holding his breath in a long abandoned glorified outhouse. His nose had died from the maggots anyway.

It was a disappointment from the get go: the seal opened to his old key, and there was no evidence of use in the last three years. Like the other base, there was nothing.

Tsunade was elbow-deep, quite literally, in the patient's torso when he darkened the threshold. "This could stand to be incinerated," she said without looking up. He assumed she meant the pungent detritus near the entrance, not the half-dead shinobi. "Outside, Uchiha."

He tore curtains from the room's window – bloodied and savaged, but free of maggots – and somehow contrived to wrap it around the mess. Outside was raining cats and dogs, so back into the latrine lab he went, fortunately also located on the ground floor. He tossed the the hunk and left it smouldering in black flames, safely ensconced behind the lab's doors.

Next Sasuke went to patrol the perimeter with his left eye closed. Because Tsunade did have a point, however infuriatingly she'd made it. She could discover Orochimaru's lab for herself, if she truly cared. Anyway Sakura once said medic-nin were trained to appreciate second opinions.

With or without the Rinnegan, Sasuke still returned empty-handed. He found Tsunade sitting by the entrance, slumped on her knees.

"Is it your apparition come to avenge your clan, Uchiha?"

She didn't even raise her head. As far as straws went this one was petty, but Sasuke snapped the question that had weighed on him since the start of this 'mission'. "You don't need me to find Orochimaru. You were the Hokage, you could have the best trackers Konoha could offer. You were his old teammate, you'd know him better than anyone else. You don't need me to kill Orochimaru. What do you really want?"

Tsunade squinted and put a hand over her eyes. "The sun shining on your back doesn't make you more impressive. Come closer."

He obliged. Her nose flared as she looked up, his shadow looming over her. "Want, need, kill… simple boy, is that your latent protective instinct rearing its head?"

"I brought Orochimaru back; he's my responsibility."

"Fatherhood, huh?" Tsunade said approvingly. "All right, then. Having decided that I wanted Orochimaru dead, what'll you do?"

"He saved your life," Sasuke said. There was only so much nonsense he could take. "He hasn't done anything all this time."

Abruptly, she stood. Sasuke too had lost interest in the conversation. He clutched his sword. "Weren't you out patrolling?"

"Only as far as the hamlet's border," he admitted grudgingly. He hadn't thought to inspect the hamlet – too odious, too big for one man when his business was elsewhere, but he could see the loophole there. So maybe for whatever reason there were shinobi in the hamlet who were alerted to his presence, and followed him back. Sasuke had no illusions that the Rinnegan could see behind his head, or that there weren't superior hunters out there. It was still stupid.

Blood rushed through his veins, and in them fire into his eyes. The world came into a sharper focus; the masked shinobi twitched as the Sharingan spun lazily at them. There were four before him, with two more circling from the back. They wore the mask and uniform of Kusagakure's ANBU.

The leader, marked as such by the excess of lines on his mask and his stepping forward, said, "Stay out of our business and we'll let you go."

Tsunade hadn't made a move; Sasuke stayed his blade for now. She inclined her head, a greeting left unreciprocrated. "And the business that takes you all the way from Kusa and breaching the treaty of non-interference would be?"

Sasuke never had the urge to knock senses into her as great as he did now. Taking pity on weak hostiles was one thing, but getting mixed in the business of small villages was both stupid and unnecessary.

He felt all eyes on him, including Tsunade's, and understood. He unsheathed his blade, waiting for her reaction; the ANBU were small fries, but if the former Hokage, and Sakura's mentor besides turned on him –

"Uchiha Sasuke is a shinobi of Konoha," Tsunade said with the practiced impatience of ruling over unruly children and petty jounin. "Is Kusa truly desperate to start a war?"

The ground exploded under their feet as razor wind chased at their heads. Sasuke had just barely managed to evade both, flickering a step behind the captain. Then two ANBU were suddenly flanking him, swords drawn and whipping deadly wind.

They were aiming for his left. Always from his empty left. The swords halted a finger from his heart, lodged within the suddenly solidifying phantom fingerbone of Susanoo, the wielder flicked to the skies by the middle finger. One. The partner who had managed to escape fell to a short burst of lightning field. Two.

In the the reprieve he noted more earth-breaking actions out of sight, and the swamp greedily sucking his feet. Black flames consumed it, and if the combination somehow caused an explosion, Sasuke had flickered to safety. He stabbed the ground and, encouraged by a muffled pained grunt, poured raw lightning chakra with the sword as conduit. Three.

Then it was the captain himself, coming at him – if he'd had the time, Sasuke would have rolled his eyes – from the left. Only, as befit of his rank, it was not as straight forward as that. Sasuke was forced to parry with his sword, wobbling more than dancing between the captain and his phantom clone. Though he could track their movements, the lack of an arm was proving to be a disadvantage. At least until Susanoo rose again and swung his mighty blade at both.

Alert, the giant's sword still flickered by his side, but no more came at him. The sounds of fighting had died, and only when a familiar voice quietly called to him did he dismiss it.

"Not too bad for a one-armed man, eh Uchiha?" But the bite was missing from her voice, and it didn't take long for his eyes to compile a list of issues: the slight pinch between her eyes, the tremors at the edge of her lips, and finally the arms crossed under her breasts, where her fingers were angled just a bit too strangely to carry the haughty indifference she wanted.

Sasuke blurted, "You're injured."

"Why, Sasuke, are you worried? I'm touched."

"And you can't heal it."

Her sneer looked like a grimace to him. "Eh, give me time. Not all of us could be young demi-gods and semi-devils. But since you are, why don't you use that excess energy to prepare these impostors for picking up. We'll leave in a couple of hours at most."

Sasuke glared, but she stubbornly held his gaze. He relented. "Impostors?"

"From Ishi; I recognised their techniques. But what's this, is not the mighty Sharingan able to discern fake gears?"

Well, he thought, the jealousy was there. The bite wasn't. He let her disappear into the house as he dragged her victims together with his. They were all alive (unsurprising if he thought about it), only one was concussed. They were all in varying states of muddy. It was times like these that made him regret leaving before receiving his prosthetic arm. Then he reminded himself he hadn't deserved it – a small part of him was convinced he never would – and anyway he'd always been able to work around it.

He considered his options. Orochimaru's latrine lab had functional holding cells. He didn't trust them. The summoning technique,fortunately, was one of the few available to a one-handed shinobi. In short order six snakes materialised in a tangled heap, announced by a chorus of 'Sasuke-sama', all sibilants drawn out. Many of the smaller snakes seemed to have viewed him as a savior for killing Manda, however incidental the act had been. That, or snakes had a sense of humour. Sasuke didn't mind as long as they could follow instructions, in this case to bind, and bite at the first signs of an attempt to escape.

He summoned his fastest cattle-snatching hawk next. Somehow all six prisoners fit on the hawk, but the snakes complained, and would only shut up when he promised them food. Then the hawk shoved its beak in his hand, and Sasuke sighed and added a deer to his list of debts. Then he sent them off, a shadow soon disappearing into the rainy night.

As promised, Sasuke gave Tsunade a couple of hours. At some point the rain had stopped, and nothing else had move sinced then. He thought of leaving a clone for a guard, or a snake, but went inside without either. Tsunade was ensconsced in the only room left untouched by the carnage, or rather the only room whose door was left to age gracefully. He went right in, feeling vindicated when all he got was a weak glare. Her arms trembled as she tried to sit; she'd given up trying to hide her wounds, at least.

"You're staring, Uchiha. Never seen an old woman before?"

He had, actually. Had seen enough to know a contemporary of Orochimaru's shouldn't have looked so wasted. But more alarming was her injury. Recognised their technique indeed, and very intimately, at that.

He began, "Is there…"

A dozen maggots crawled out of the thin, blackened slit under her breast. Tsunade winced, cursing under her breath. Sasuke put down the hand he didn't realise he'd lifted, but she noticed, and grinned. A wounded predator, he thought, then berated himself. It was just Tsunade.

"Hey, now, don't look like I'm a corpse already. This juvenile shit–" Deft fingers snatched a handful of maggots with the speed of, well, a shinobi, and crushed them in her grip. Crunch, and more crawled out of the wound. Tsunade said, "–is born of chakra. Mine, specifically. Oh, there's a real, organic one in there somewhere, the queen. It burrows at the closest chakra node and eats and squeezes chakra into these lovely little lunks."

She sucked breath through gritted teeth. Pale, purple veins pulsed on her neck. Sasuke was no doctor, but he was rather sure her pallor, almost invisible, was not a good sign. Still, she insisted on explaining herself to him. "And squirts toxin that damages the physical and metaphysical chakra pathway for good measure… thereby ensuring its own death in the end, what a respectful pest. So you see, I've arrived at the point where I barely retain enough chakra to stay conscious."

Sure enough, the seal she'd shared with her apprentice was gone. "So get help. Or have you given up?"

"Is that a pep talk?" She flopped gracelessly on her back. " Now get out. Those prisoners aren't going to keep themselves under control."

The Rikudou Sennin had granted Naruto the power to heal and destroy. Uchiha that he was, Sasuke could only destroy. He closed his eyes, dredging up the glimpse of Tsunade's healing that he had caught. No hand seals, but he was getting good at manipulating chakra flow without them.

He kneeled by her side and _tried_. Still, medical ninjutsu turned out to be so much more complicated than combat ninjutsu. It just wouldn't cooperate. Eventually Tsunade could no longer ignore his pitiful attempts. "What are you doing?"

"No miraculous healing rays, but…" An idea came to him. "But you're out of chakra; if chakra's all you need, I have it. I don't need it."

Pale lips thinned dangerously; it was the first genuine smile he'd seen from her. "Oh, Sasuke, weren't you listening?" Her fingers curled around his wrist as though it was something fragile and precious, the cold of her touch made him still. "I can have the chakra of the nine _bijuu_ and I would not be able to do anything with a damaged pathway. And I can't chance the poison infecting you, Sakura would resurrect me just to kill me herself. Won't you think of me?"

That was exactly the problem, he thought as he watched her weakly swatting at a maggot that crawled up her nose. "Yes, Sakura. What about her?" Tsunade looked away, but not before Sasuke saw a glimmer of shame in her eyes.

When push come to shove he could out-stubborn her – or maybe she'd slipped into delirium; but she agreed to at least try. It was simple: he pooled chakra in his palm to be siphoned, which she did, but then nothing happened.

"You're not even trying," Sasuke groused, to which she gave him the most insincere apologetic smile.

Cleaning, as it happened, was yet another thing an one-armed man could do. It didn't seem to do much – the maggots never ended, her breathing remained shallow and she was quiet, sleeping an insect-less dream, he hoped. Sasuke made a few more abortive attempts before giving up on medical ninjutsu as a lost cause, at least until he could get a proper instruction.

It was raining again. He hadn't noticed it, but now he couldn't stop listening to the pitter patter of water on burned clay, a different sound from the way it fell on gravel, on the once varnished wooden porch. So much water at such frequency on so many surfaces, it all became a low hiss fading to the back of his mind. The tortured rattle of Tsunade's lungs; how long before it faded like the Ishi-nin's they had found? And, oh, they still hosted Ishi-nin after all. What pests the lot from that one tiny village could be.

He thought of things with red eyes: dogs, night guards, Uchiha. Sasuke sat on the darkened porch, sword out and lying on his lap.


	5. Chapter 5

In Ame dawn came riding on a mighty gust, an ear-piercing shriek, and an effortlessly silent landing punctuated only by his name. Sasuke-kun. He blinked blearily and wondered, quite inanely, if he'd ever been anything else to her, if he'd ever be. Sakura's face was etched with worry that only became entrenched at the sight of him. But he shook his head and directed her to Tsunade, and off she went.

He supposed it could have been worse: his sword instead of an enemy's poison. Three years ago it would've been the only possible scenario. The hawk landed and ducked its head. Sasuke stroked the beak that could, theoretically, snap off his entire torso, mumbled a weak praise, and dismissed it.

His neck made a creaking sound as he sat back down. They were not out of the woods yet, though Sakura's presence lifted the pressure of his shoulders by that much. He could almost wish for an intruder or two. But none came as the sun steadily climbed. Sakura only emerged then. She sat close enough to feel her heat, far enough to be reminded of the distance.

"Tsunade-shishou is going to be all right," Sakura said. "Thanks to you, Sasuke-kun."

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, trying to gauge her sincerity. Sakura looked… she'd grown thinner, had shed the last of her childish softness and acquired a permanent _tanuki_ -likeness that the Kazekage would approve of. Three years. Three years was a long time to not see someone. It unsettled him to think that of another person – but Sakura had always had that effect on him.

"I didn't do anything," he said.

Sakura only smiled as if she knew better. Her hand brushed timidly against his. "We were lucky your hawk found me during the one hour of the day I had to myself. You sure know how to surprise me, Sasuke-kun. No word for a year, and suddenly! A hawkful of unconscious prisoners in my lap, and from Ame of all places!"

"I'm sorry," Sasuke said. More ink he had spilled than in his entire life, each letter drawing from a vein closer and closer to his heart; all fodder for camp fire now, and when the time came the best he had was 'sorry'. Sorry I stepped on your toes, sorry I burned dinner, sorry you had to wait, sorry. Five minutes. Give her five minutes to sit next to him and he was a club-tongued man of words.

Sakura blinked, then saying more gently, "It's just that we signed a treaty of non-interference with the other countries about a year ago, if you didn't know. Either way, Shishou should have known better. No use crying over spilled porridge, now. Torture and Investigation should have the intel for Kakashi-sensei even as we speak. But…"

She hesitated. "But I think he'd also like to know how you and Tsunade-sama got a hold of them in the first place. Since he has to be accountable to the other Kage?"

From her expression, they seemed to have decided it was his fault, whoever they were. Which wasn't wrong, so he told her his theory. Sakura flipped between outrage at Ishi's notion of Kakashi's (and Naruto's) easy belligerence, and then Ishi's utter disregard for its own shinobi on top of a tactical folly.

"But what I don't understand, Sasuke-kun," she said, cheeks burning with righteous fury – he'd never get tired of that. "I'm just a little bit curious, because, well, it's you and Tsunade-shishou, and you're traveling together."

For multiple reasons – his ego still smarted, for one – he deflected with, "Ask Tsunade; it's hers to tell."

"Yeah. Yeah, it is," she said, brows ever so slightly furrowed. "I'm glad she's with you. Shishou just up and went missing one day, can you believe her? Just left a message not to bother looking, and left me and Shizune-senpai scrambling to get the hospital and the clinic in order, just like that. We were so worried, Sasuke-kun. I mean, despite her reputation she's not so awfully irresponsible like that, usually. But Naruto wasn't worried at all, so I tried not to, at first, but…"

She hesitated. "It's just… ever since the war I've had this suspicion – Shishou seemed in such a hurry to step down, to replace herself, really. I've wondered if she hadn't recovered properly but forced herself for the sake of the village – probably never. Looks like I'm right."

She stretched her neck one way, then another. He imagined her knotted muscles relaxing under his fingers, and felt annoyed with himself. Because one-handed massage would be _so effective_. And Sasuke didn't even know where he stood with her.

Instead he said, "You opened a new clinic?"

It turned out to be her sweet spot. With little prompting she told him of the mental health clinic for children she had built – she had tried to be modest, but Sasuke really wasn't that stupid – how she had been inspired by certain orphans, and made this the expression of her post-war euphoria. She wasn't the only one infected, the chief pathogen being the usual suspect (Naruto), and soon men's names began to fill her stories. So many women Sasuke had never even heard of, but had no doubt were real, so vivid was her retelling. Yet it was the children who had her wrapped around their grubby little fingers. He could see her surrounded by pink-haired little terrors… comforting a sulky dark-haired, dark-eyed brat…

The she glanced at his face and paused. "What?" he said. His smile was gone as quickly as it had come, but Sakura had seen it.

Sakura shook her head. "Enough about me," she said, and left it at that. This was Sakura, selfish enough to allow her feeling to fill to the brim so as to be palpable, selfless enough to leave him the choice for something as mundane as holding his end of small talk.

"This isn't how I want to see you again," he said.

She sighed, picked at the hem of her shirt. It still burst out of her. "And when is that?"

"I promised I'd return," he said, as terse as the set of her jaw. And stop sighing, he didn't say. Sakura had the right to it and so much more, and Sasuke to forbid her anything not at all. "I never asked you to wait for me." It wouldn't have been fair.

"Of course you didn't, you just said next time, next time! next time you'll return, and then… what?" Sakura sighed and hugged her knees. "What are we, Sasuke-kun?"

She'd said 'we', but he knew she meant 'I', the person beholden when he faced her. They were Sasuke and Sakura, and theirs was a history writ in black and red, of saving and killing one another. Of long conversations under her roof, the short dango breaks they'd managed to smuggle into her schedule. Sparring to regain his lost edge, to know each other. Sakura had come so far from her genin days, and all for his sake. For her sake, as much as Naruto's and Kakashi's, for his new family Sasuke had suffered the scrutiny of Konoha, until Kakashi came into power and finally restored some semblance of justice to his clan. A graceful retirement was not what Sasuke would have given the elders, but… he had to trust in Naruto's way. He had to; he had resolved to.

And that was another thing. Naruto always understood, and Kakashi was Kakashi; words were unwanted with these two. So it was Sakura he had come to, Sakura who'd known nothing and thus needed everything explained: the truth of the massacre, the Rikudou Sennin and his sons, and his family. His past opened to her as it closed to him. Naruto always had his eye on a future he would drag into the present, but Sakura had always been rooted in the here and now. Sakura was ready for the future, never one to be at odds with her heart for too long, and he admired her for that. Sasuke… Sasuke needed more time.

Her letters were the sonar beacon to his lost bat, trying to find his way home, faithful where his replies faltered, if they existed at all. But she was not the sun, and even Sakura tired. After a long silence on his end she wrote what was to be the last, should he wish it. He had agonised over odd jobs, as the seasons changed and he crossed the continent. There was never a reply, and that was that. He still felt it sometimes, when he awoke in the hour of the dog for no discernible reasons and thought of her, the relief of a man, hanging on a ledge, at the last moment no longer needing to strain himself.

But all this time she was still waiting, still hanging, still unwilling to let go. Not forever, he thought. Here she was and here he was, Sasuke and Sakura on a precipice, how would they fall?

"We are whatever you want us to be." Time and distance only crystalised the truth: what Sakura wanted was also what Sasuke wanted. He felt his heart swell thinking about it, wings unfurled and ready to take flight, drawn to full height and poised to strike. Sasuke had never had a clear endpoint for his journey, but at some point it became urgent for him to return to Konoha. He saw Sakura at the end of his road, and it terrified him. He had to know. _Do you know him, do you know the great man I could become?_ Naruto did, and he believed in him. Sakura, though… Sakura had tried to kill him. Out of love, he understood; just like Itachi. And Itachi, much as he loved him, much as he loved Sasuke, clearly Itachi had never known him. He had to know. "Whatever you want me to be."

Sakura's lips parted as though she didn't understand a word he said, and he had to stamp the urge to explain himself even as her lips drew taut. "I don't understand," she said, fists clenched. "I've been trying – Tsunade-shishou said that you need to find your self apart from anyone – so maybe I don't understand that–"

"It's nothing to do with you." Sasuke said, a captain trying to seize the helm when his ship was already in the storm.

The many angers of Sakura had been a discovery to him, and he had taken a perverse sort of joy in cataloguing all of them. Sasuke had been on the receiving end of her volatile tempers, but she'd never sneered at him. Ah, she must have learned that from Tsunade, he thought with a kind of peaceful resignation. Sakura was practically bursting at the seams. "Of course not! I'm too nice, too – too stupid to understand, is that it? Three years, Sasuke-kun! At least tell me you've found – I don't know, I almost would rather hear you've found another woman! Instead you… what, you've lost yourself? Again? How many times is it now?"

Throughout her tirade Sasuke sat absolutely still. He didn't dare to look at her and catch her tears. Her silhouette buried her head in hands. "I'm sorry," came her muffled voice after a while. "You must be tired, and this isn't…" With him Sakura was pathologically honest, and honesty demanded she never finish that sentence.

"You're tired, too." Of waiting, to be sure. Of Sasuke? Well, he'd wanted to know, he thought dully, there was his answer.

Sakura made a sound like a wounded dog. "You should get some rest. I'm going to stay until Tsunade-shishou is recovered, and then." She shrugged pitifully.

He wished she'd have gone right then, stormed off in a huff as she sometimes did when overwhelmed. "We'll talk. I…" He steeled his voice. "It's a promise."

Stiffly, staring ahead, Sakura nodded. He went first, but as he disappeared into the house, she said, "I still love you, Sasuke-kun, I'll always do. But I can't love you _for you_."

The only serviceable room in the house had used to belong to a child. Sasuke was folded on the bed like a shrimp, too exhausted to care that his back would hate him.

Sakura couldn't do whatever, but she definitely could stop him from sleeping.


	6. Chapter 6

The first thing Tsunade saw upon waking up was Sasuke sitting by her bed. She had better; Sasuke had been sitting so close to her for hours. Sakura's fault. Sasuke didn't want to think about Sakura, so he watched Tsunade's eyes slowly focus on him.

She was still for so long he thought she'd fallen asleep with her eyes open. "You're still here," she said as though to a dream.

"My apparition," Sasuke said, and offered the food Sakura had prepared. "Vengeance for my clan."

It was the standard medicinal field ratio: nutritional broth that smelled like dirt. Judging by Tsunade's face it must have tasted like landfill. She sat up and took the bowl from him. If he tried, Sasuke could see the vestiges of the young woman she'd rather present to the world behind the wrinkles. Her distinctive, elegant bones were even more prominent. Striking was the word, though most people looked better without the pallor of a corpse. He caught himself and stared at the wall, fighting down the flush in his neck.

If Tsunade noticed, she didn't say anything as she handed him back the bowl. "Sakura still here?"

Water for her throat, then. "Yes."

"Ah." Tsunade knocked back the glass.

"Ah."

"Your bedside manners, _Uchiha_." She blew his name as profanity. But as she shifted, the line above her eyes he'd thought was a wrinkle eased. "I see how it is. Had a quarrel, eh, so now you come to ogle another woman, you cad."

She frowned when he didn't react, for once noticing the atmosphere. "Chin up, kid, it happens. Wouldn't be right if a couple never fight, but it's not the end."

Shrugging, Sasuke leaned forward. "Did you truly kill him? Your… precious person. The one who believed in you."

"If it hurts your sensibilities to say lover, his name was Dan," she said dryly. "Orochimaru told you that? No? I did? The whole speech? Dare I hope it wasn't verbatim?" It took her some time to jog her memories, but once she did she had to be prompted to get back to him. "Yes… you could say that. I had the chance, and I let him slip away. I couldn't heal anyone after that either; I was useless; I despised the shinobi way and everything it has consumed, and everyone consummated with it. So I deserted."

No wonder she had expressed wonderment at her own appointment. "But you came back."

Tsunade favoured him with a lopsided grin. "Why, I was needed; who am I to say no? My grandfather built the village. It was his dream, a place for silly boys to dream and succeed. The hat was Dan's and my brother's, and heaven only knows how many other loud brats. The man who'll run the best ramen bar in the world; the world's first mental care facility for children and the compassionate girl who dreams it. You wonder why; you're really asking, would I have let the village that birthed these people die? Someone had to staunch Konoha's bleeding; I was it. That's all."

Then, an afterthought that seemed too dismissive to be anything but a confession, "Besides, who wouldn't jump at the chance to mold a whole village to her liking? Hey, Uchiha, mind if I lie down?"

She'd done it about five sentences ago. She hadn't told him to go away, so Sasuke asked, "But it was never your dream?"

"Eh, what's an old woman got to dream?" she said dismissively. "Dreams, faith in your person… those are nice, but sometimes it's a matter of answering the needs of others."

Faith again. Sasuke's thoughts turned back to Orochimaru, or rather Tsunade's drunk speech which turned out to have been quoted, word for word, from Orochimaru. So Orochimaru of all people had gone on and on about faith. As a warning?

It was a lot of wild-guessing and as good as gossiping, but sleep-deprived, Sasuke had looser control of his tongue and imagination both. He laid it out to her. "But it wasn't that your… lover didn't know or believe in the real you. Maybe it was _you_. Orochimaru thought you believed in him and drew his whatever from that." And then Tsunade had revealed otherwise, hence the bitter comment? There was only so much gossip he would indulge.

"I've thought him worried in his own way, even jealous. Nothing so salacious as desire, just that he disliked that I was so besotted with a man so far beneath us. In retrospect it was prescient of him, but…" Tsunade grimaced. "No, I don't believe in our long history Orochimaru has ever held me so high in his regard."

Tsunade looked pensive, pale and worn, and belatedly Sasuke recalled Sakura's rant of well-meaning visitors who aggravated her patients. But the one before him snapped herself out of it and said, "Pah, we'll find out from the mouth of the horse itself. That reminds me, what did you do with the Ishi-nin?"

He told her. She sat up as though the pillow was on fire. "Did Orochimaru deliberately make you stupid?" Tsunade was livid and taut – literally, the lines on her face disappeared right under his watch, leaving only the one borne of irritation on her forehead.

"Konoha could handle it better. Also, you were wounded." Really, Sasuke could have sworn she had had more wrinkles than that. He considered, briefly, of continuing on this irritating vein – for her own good, of course. "There's those deserters you healed."

It was the worst thing he could have said. Tsunade leapt and swooped past him, or tried to, and really hobbled her way out. Sasuke sighed. Sakura would kill him. But he was also trying not to think of her, so he hovered by Tsunade's elbow, and was impressed despite himself that she didn't once need his help.

Sasuke had left the prisoners in the servant's chamber. They weren't imprisoned, per se, they – Sasuke and Sakura – hadn't put much more effort into confinement beyond restricting the chakra flow of the one who was only mildly injured, and letting convalescence handle the other.

The former glared at them warily as they entered, also frowning in confusion until recognition flashed in his eye, then it was back to glaring. Sasuke found a chair and tested it. Satisfied, he went to stand by the door and pretended not to notice the way Tsunade just dropped herself on it. And just sat for the longest moment, catching her breath, until the Ishi-nin's curiosity got the better of him.

"What–"

She made a spitting noise without actually spitting. "I don't care about what happens to deserters from another village; I don't even care about your village. But you _will_ tell me how your ANBU got a hold of Orochimaru's technique – oh, the base is that of your old hero, but the maggot is all Orochimaru. Isn't that how you wound up in middle of nowhere, Ame? You were desperate to heal your partner, heard about Orochimaru's old lab in the area." She nodded to the other, who looked vastly better, if still deader than a log.

The Ishi-nin clamped his jaw. Strange, for a deserter to still be loyal to his village. Sasuke thought of reminding him to be grateful, but if Tsunade'd thought it could've been useful she would've said it already. Tsunade went on, "So what is it? You turned your head when he set up his research in the area, and in return you get techniques? intelligence?"

The Ishi-nin spat in her direction and swore. "Do you get off pretending to be a Buddha, hag? Have your old buddy destroy Ishi so you could fix it?"

Tsunade smiled. Not your friendly neighbourhood _obasan_ , this woman. "Sure, whatever helps you sleep at night. I'll even take care of your Orochimaru problem, how about that? As you say, us old friends have a score to settle." Then soberly, she said, "We'll help you get as far away from Ishi as possible, once I'm certain your partner can make it. My word as the Godaime Hokage."

In Sasuke's esteem that shouldn't have meant much, but the Ishi-nin looked at him, and he looked pointedly at the slumbering deserter, and reluctantly, the Ishi-nin began talking. Not much; this man didn't seem eloquent to begin with. Sasuke gathered that with alliance between the greater villages, the smaller villages found work drying up for them for one reason or another. Ishi had always competed with Kusa; the game just suddenly got a lot smaller. The man mostly blamed Konoha, or rather, to Sasuke's amusement, Naruto, who seemed to have spearheaded most of the alliance. Ishi was driven to a brink, and coincidentally, Orochimaru came to set up shop there. So it was Konoha's fault all around.

It was also Orochimaru's idea to bring down Konoha's wrath on Kusa. The fake ANBU gears had come from him, too; the Ishi-nin wearing them had not. And this got their prisoner frothing. His kage would never have thought to sacrifice his men before Konoha's snake poisoned his mind.

"Do you agree with him?" Sasuke said. They were in the hallway, and both he and Tsunade were doing their best to ignore the part where Tsunade practically crawled along the wall. He had half a mind to scold her for treating the sick Ishi-nin in her state. Just half.

"Eh," Tsunade said.

"Eh, that's a load of crap? Eh, maybe you shouldn't have left Konoha to Kakashi and Naruto so soon?"

The stairway. Sasuke braced her by the elbow, since the railing had been destroyed. Tsunade said nothing, didn't even give him the side-eye. Sasuke made a note to seek Sakura, only for the devil herself to wait for them at the landing, hand on mouth and far too many troublesome emotions parading through her expression.

Sasuke dithered, but Tsunade was faster.

"Yes, it is. Exactly what it looks like. Heaven's sake, Sakura, I didn't beat the insecurity out of you so you could be jealous of _me_." She shoved Sasuke's arm onto Sakura, nearly toppling over her, and staggered into her room.

Sakura's face was fast matching her shirt. It was the perfect opportunity to straighten out his relationship to her, which was why Sasuke cowardly said, "It's really important to her."

She seemed to finally realise she still had his hand and was about to let go, but Sasuke twisted and grabbed her wrist. "Tsunade and I, we–"

"N-no, don't worry about that!" He could almost feel the heat radiating off her face. "Shishou's right, I was just being stupid."

"She didn't say that." She looked skeptical. Sasuke said, "We'll talk. I promised, so we'll talk. But she needs you right now."

Though Tsunade didn't think so, and somehow had found a way to seal the door. However much she fretted, Sakura didn't want to break in, and neither did Sasuke. They drifted to the room they had taken turns sleeping in, sitting side by side on the small bed. It was a tight fit, very apt for their situation.

His back warm from the rare afternoon sun shining through the curtainless window, Sasuke decided he owed Sakura, and began first. "Tsunade is looking for someone. She thinks I can help her. As a bait, at least."

Sakura made a small noise. She always did have a sharp mind. "Orochimaru? But why?"

"Ah," Sasuke exhaled slowly. "You of all people should understand."

"Well, yes, but…" Sakura did know, and had confessed as much; they both knew: bonds that transcend betrayals and desertions and attempted or successful killings, bonds that turned a willingness to save a life to an entitlement to end it. "But you saw her! You were with her, you know she couldn't fight Orochimaru."

"Ah. I'm not going to let her die," Sasuke said.

"O-oh, I didn't mean to imply–"

She froze as his knuckles brushed hers, then his hand covered hers, and then it was Sasuke's turn to suppress a shiver. "Give her time."

Sakura sighed. "And you as well."

She smelled like moldy cotton, like he did, like the entire house did. Sasuke inhaled deeply. "I don't know if the world needs the Uchiha. Konoha is doing well, has been for a long time, without my clan."

She squeezed his hand and trapped it between hers. "But we need you," she said, an edge of desperation in her voice. "Naruto, Kakashi-sensei. _I_ need you. And if it's Kakashi-sensei, I'm sure he could be made to work with you. He has to. He _knows_ it's injustice, he knows it encompasses more than the Uchiha. I mean it, Sasuke-kun. It's absolutely the problem of the entire village if a clan, even the founding clan, can be marginalised to the point of extinction, and he's sworn to make things better and Naruto–"

Sasuke shook his head. "Kakashi's doing what he can, and even that idiot Naruto is getting involved in everything. You're all working hard, but it's not easy. Konoha isn't going to change overnight. I can understand that. Anyway, Naruto and Kakashi have the entire village behind them. And you… you're strong, Sakura. The kind of strength I wish I'd understood when Itachi told me to seek power.

"But that's my clan, Sakura. That's the Uchiha. We're made for war and violence. Our pride and joy we awaken through loss and despair. And vengeance. You don't know how right it'd felt."

He was afraid to look at her and saw revulsion, but her gentle hand cupped his chin, imploring him to look at her. What she could have seen in his hideous eyes he didn't know; he definitely knew it wasn't worth the compassion in hers. "But you've overcome it. Yes, for a while you were lost… so lost that I'd believed you were beyond help… but you pulled yourself out, Sasuke-kun, and I think that's remarkable."

"No, that was Naruto. I can't ever win against him."

A ghost of a smile lit on her face. "I don't think anyone can. Um, you must be tired of hearing this…"

He brushed the fringe covering her seal, letting his hand linger there. Sakura leaned into the touch. A pleasant tingle sparked from his fingers all the way to his head, and he murmured, "I know. I'm not alone. I can trust you, Sakura, to catch me when I fall. But not with myself. Not with where I'm going." He wasn't making much sense, he knew; it frustrated him to no end. "Not the way I have with Itachi."

Sakura pulled away to look at him in the eye, taking with her words with which he could have explained himself. She understood anyway. "You want to be absolutely sure that no matter what you do, it's a decision that you've thought and chosen for yourself."

He told himself he absolutely deserved her long-suffering sigh. Then her cynicism. "I suppose I can understand that. So you'll need more time. That's all right. After five years, what's a few more?" She had every right to her non-existent faith in him and his promises, too. Somehow, she still had the grace to favour him with an apologetic, if pained, smile. "But, well, it's not really about me, is it?"

"I'm sorry."

Her snort echoed between the dilapidated furniture. The bed sprang with her rise, or that was his insides taking flight, leaving him empty. He almost didn't hear her say, "I think, at the end of the day, in my better moments, all I really want is for you to be happy – but you think happiness is nebulous, anyway, so I'll settle for peace."

Her grin was cheeky and pained at once. It was her kiss that nearly undid him, made him greedy. He wanted more than her lips on his forehead. But they were still moving, and he forced himself to listen to the words coming out of them. "… if Konoha's not a part of it, or, or if I'm not, then so be it. Just… to be able to be content with yourself. That's it, Sasuke-kun."

Sasuke closed his eyes, thought to hell with it, and kissed her back. On the lips, but just a peck, to tease her, but more himself. It was a promise, and what was one more between them?


	7. Chapter 7

_Beta-reading credit goes to elenathehun. What would I do without you, buddy?_

* * *

Sakura had wanted to come with them. She'd had three days to make her case, beginning with overtures subtle enough to be brushed off as polite worry, and ending, on the day of their departure, with a vigorous debate that must have rattled all the way downstairs. Times like these reminded Sasuke that, yes, that infernal woman was Sakura's teacher.

Or had been, as Tsunade was insisting. Sasuke walked in on Sakura saying, "But even Kakashi-sensei has admitted to missing your wisdom!"

To which said wise woman chortled. "I'm sorry, I must have gone deaf. My wisdom?"

Sakura looked at Sasuke helplessly, who could do nothing but shrug. Sakura tried again, saying it all in one breath. "W-well, I – I definitely think you are wise! You taught me – made me into what I am today, and I regret to say that I still need your instructions. I need you, Shishou!" She finished with a bow.

"Sakura, Sakura, my silly little apprentice Sakura, you need me least of all. No, it's time for you to grow up and assume responsibilities. You can't expect your old master to catch you forever." The fierce pride in her expression caught Sasuke off-guard. Sakura stared at the woman before her – perfect hair, perfect skin, and Yin Seal pulsing with power – as though seeing an impostor.

Sasuke squeezed her hand, speaking for the first time. "Someone has to take care of Orochimaru." This didn't seem to mollify Sakura at all.

"Come now," Tsunade said, impatient and yet soft, "I won't be away forever. At the very least I'll return your boyfriend to you."

Sakura let go of his hand in order to have two hands to massage her temple with. "All right, already. Do you have to double-team me, though?"

Sasuke gave her hand one final squeeze. I'll return her to you, he vowed silently. She didn't seem mollified by that one either.

Justifiably so, as that very night Tsunade disappeared. Sasuke caught up to her at the border of Ame and Kusa. She didn't seem surprised to find him following her.

"It's not her place," Tsunade said as Sasuke joined her.

"Hn."

"She wouldn't understand."

Bluntly, Sasuke said, "She does. More than you give her credit for." After all, he had thought the same, and learned better later.

Tsunade snorted and shook her head. "Let it be known that I still think she could do better than you, but… you're getting there, Uchiha. Keep it up. Now stop dawdling. Orochimaru will not wait for us."

Sasuke thought that with the way they'd been going through his bases Orochimaru would've been alerted already, but he kept his silence and followed. Night gave into day, and the marshes dried and firmed, grass and shrubbery became a steppe. Steppe gave way to cement and stone pavement, and they steered clear of that. Orochimaru would not be found among any civilisation but the one he fashioned for himself. Sasuke had been thinking about it all the while. The Kusa-nin they'd fought had been too low-ranked to be privy to any information pertaining Orochimaru. A snake hiding in grass. But suppose the grass was on fire, suppose a fat rat ran around rustling the grass…

Well, Sasuke was that fat rat, and, as Tsunade loved to note, he could inflame anything with a glance. And they had been going around the world, ringing the bell in every base of Orochimaru's.

On the second day, the snake's tail rattled. Suigetsu hadn't lost his flimsiness at all, and Jūgo still looked at Sasuke with more respect that he'd deserved. It nagged at Sasuke now that he no longer needed Jūgo's absolute compliance, but probably not as much as the fact that they both went back to Orochimaru.

"Karin?" he asked before either could speak.

"You'll see," Suigetsu said cryptically. "Hey, so, just checking, this isn't you coming back home all errant son-like?" He eyed Tsunade nervously as he said this.

"Tell Orochimaru his old friend wanted a word," Sasuke said.

"Yeah, that's what Orochimaru-sama – and me, by the way – figured." Suigetsu shrugged. "Well, this way."

"You seem well," Jūgo said quietly as he brought up the rear.

Sasuke nodded, and – perhaps inspired by his reunion with Sakura – for small talk, he replied, "And you?"

"I am well," answered Jūgo. This caused Tsunade to give Sasuke a jaundiced look.

Suigetsu took them to a crevice in a valley near the borders of Ishi. It was less of a tight fit than it first appeared. The labyrinthine tunnels within were familiar, as was the darkness. He was taken to a room with a ceiling-high glass column filled with ominous-looking effervescent liquid, and the still more foreboding-looking indistinct figure floating within it. Orochimaru stood before his experiment, pretending he hadn't staged all this for his visitors' benefit. As soon as he'd announced their presence, Suigetsu fled, taking Jūgo with him.

Tsunade crossed her arms. "All right, I'll bite. What in hell is that, Orochimaru?"

"Tut, tut, so impatient. Is that the Hokage asking, Tsunade?" Orochimaru turned, slowly, dramatically. The shape of his earlobes were different, as was his nose. His frame was wider than Sasuke remembered. It had only taken Orochimaru three years to start looking for a new body. Sasuke was… not disappointed. Only a fool would be disappointed that an untamed snake, upon his release into the wilderness, would eat the first rat that came his way.

But he wondered what Tsunade would make of this. There was a grim satisfaction to her as she said, "A new body. I see yours was a minuscule change, if any had occurred at all."

Orochimaru's gaze shifted to Sasuke, lingering long enough that Tsunade must have noticed it, too. He answered slowly, as though the gaze should have sufficed and he was disappointed it didn't. "Alas, the wind was stopped before this windmill could be moved. Although since you are here, Sasuke-kun, perhaps I have been remiss. Perhaps you've only been biding your time."

Sasuke didn't answer. He had missed his chance to affect things when he let Orochimaru slip after the war ended, and subsequently never sought him out. Never cared to, if he had to be honest with himself. He was used to the vagaries of Orochimaru's eccentricities, and as long as he didn't threaten Konoha directly, Sasuke didn't care. Even then, he was fairly certain Naruto could handle him. Come what may, Sasuke had promised to come back to Konoha. To come home.

From the start of their journey, Orochimaru had always been Tsunade's business. Tsunade, who had been uncharacteristically still. Taking Sasuke's silence as it was meant, Orochimaru addressed Tsunade once more. "Well, Tsunade? It is a little unprecedented, but I'm sure we could find a suitable arrangement. It is not every day that a Hokage steps down from her position alive. I am humbled to receive your presence here."

"Oh, stuff it," Tsunade said. Sasuke thought it lacked her usual bite. "I'm not here to join you, Orochimaru. Never in a million lifetimes. Put that out of your mind. The time for our alliance had come, and long past."

Orochimaru didn't seem surprised or let down in the slightest. He seemed thoroughly bored, in fact. "Well, I've tried. But surely you did not come all this way with Sasuke-kun only to die, discarded like a used rag now that Konoha has found a virile young man to hang its hopes on."

Tsunade snorted. "Projecting won't validate your issues, Orochimaru. But you're right about one thing…" Suddenly, firmly, she said to Sasuke, "Leave us."

In response, Sasuke only raised one eyebrow. "No. As you say, I'm keeping my promise."

Tsunade didn't seem amused by the callback to their earlier conversation. "This isn't the time and place, boy. Sometimes you just have to fall back on a promise, and vow to make right on the next one."

"This isn't about that. Or you," Sasuke said, insisted really.

"Is that all?" Orochimaru said, sounding almost disappointed. "Are you truly set to oppose me? Tis a folly the way you are now, Tsunade; surely you must have realised that."

"Yes," Tsunade said slowly, "Is that all, Orochimaru? A brush with death, a look at the other side, a second chance at life, and a snake returns to its old hole. Enough."

Orochimaru moved and said nothing. The chamber was suddenly teeming with shadows, like cockroaches that swarmed inside silently as Orochimaru turned and left through the other exit. One vaguely tentacled blob jumped at Tsunade as she followed, but Sasuke's sword got to it first. She never looked back, taking it for granted Sasuke would cover her back. He wondered if it was as much as Orochimaru took it for granted his minions would die to stop Sasuke.

They did, one by one, throwing themselves at Sasuke. He had just enough pity to merely disarm and dislocate what he could. The earth shook with power originating elsewhere, and echoes of destruction that had nothing to do with his carnage deafened his ears. Finally, only Suigetsu and Jūgo remained. The former flinched under Sasuke's mismatched gaze.

"Hey, look," Suigetsu said, holding up empty hands, "For the record, I think this is stupid, too, okay."

The earth shook, with the unmistakable vibrations of a distant explosion echoing in the underground room. Sasuke shrugged. "Are you going to stand in my way?"

Grimacing, Suigetsu slunk off, Jūgo a step behind him. Sasuke wasted no time in chasing after the remnants of the Legendary Sannin. Quiet had descended in a way that left his ears ringing – too quiet.

The path wended upwards, spitting Sasuke onto a prairie, or what was left of it amidst the gouges and craters. With his eyes he found Tsunade almost instantly, sat in the middle of a shallow crater as though in deep meditation. Even at distance he could see the tremors on her hands, the fine lines of age that must have plagued her precious face as well.

Of Orochimaru there were no signs to be seen. The Rinnegan saw nothing foul, but Sasuke still approached with caution, and what in another person would be called dread.

"Tsunade," he began, and waited.

Even with her back turned to him he thought he could see her smile. "Why, Sasuke. You called my name. Worried? I'm almost touched."

Slowly, she turned her head. Withered, and no longer hiding the pain each movement cost her, Tsunade smiled at Sasuke.

"Orochimaru?"

"Not a problem anymore," she said smoothly.

"Ah… And you?"

Tsunade smiled impossibly wide. That seemed to be her only answer. "And what will you do now, Sasuke?"

"Home," he answered, surprising himself with how forceful the idea was, how quickly it leapt off his tongue. He hadn't spent too much time thinking about it, but he supposed it had been long incubating at the back of his mind. And now that it had broken out of its shell there was no containing the longing, the thrill long absent from his journey.

"Then go home, Sasuke," said Tsunade, "Go home, and be lost no more."

* * *

 _And that's all, folks, for my first completed WIP in... forever! I started writing this before the Gaiden came out. My thoughts on canon compliance has changed since then, but honestly, I wouldn't have written a different ending._


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